Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Sun_Addict

🤣🤣 to the cat hair transplant 🤣🤣 

kayannie

Just in case Soot or Ash decide to lick you after applying sun cream - when my dog did this, he was immediately violently sick. Luckily, he recovered very quickly without needing a trip to the vet. KA

angela110660

We have had a few funny coloured (white and black) ladybirds in the garden - not the usual red and black ones. Very odd. 

foxgloves

@kayannie - Despite Soot being a really quite shocking pig (though a very lovely one!), he isn't a cat to lick people, so he was safe from my sun cream & I think he probably got a very minimal amount on his fur. There can be quite a lot of chemicals in some of these things, can't there?

@angela110660 - We have sometimes had black spotted pale mustardy coloured ladybirds in our garden, also the black ones with red spots & the red ones with cream spots. I suspect that including the harlequin ones, which I guess are probably all over the country now, that we have more varieties of ladybirds in the UK than we know.

@Sun_Addict - Glad it gave you a laugh - for a minute I thought I was going to have to source some industrial strength Immac !
F

KajiKita

How rude of the ladybird! 😉😂
I got bitten by a spider once, one of the dull brown house spiders. I had a white numb spot where it bit me that kept expanding. I was starting to get worried (alone in the house, NYE) but it stopped expanding when it got to the size of an old 50p piece. 

The hairy supplementation made me smile too. Soot is an endless source of chaos-innovation it seems 😊❤️

KK

foxgloves

Hello Saturday Savers,
Decent day here so far. Cooler, cloudy & not as muggy at the moment so am enjoying chatting to you from the coffee bench. Today's budget-helping activity has mainly been taking up those meat deals at our local butcher. We had £35 of that underspend left following the pantry stock-up so this subsidised our total spend of £55, of which the other £20 will come from Week 1's grocery budget. We did manage to buy one of the bargainaceous whole pork loins which was priced at £60 but was £25 in the offer. Mr F cut it into 3 good-sized joints, including one for making a spicy pulled pork in the slow cooker at some point & a bigger one for doing a roast dinner next weekend when we have guests. We had planned to serve roast chicken, but felt it would be a sensible swap to use some of this nice pork instead of buying an additional item. He also cut a box of pork steaks from it & froze them too.
We also made use of 2 of the butcher's other offers - 10 for £20 on a combination of pick & mix packs, some of which will be used at BH weekend when we have friends coming over for a BBQ, & a 3 for £10 offer which stocked us up with plenty of mince & a pack of Cumberland sausages. After everything was divvied up & frozen, Mr F did a count-up & reckons we have got at least 51 main meal portions out of that £55 spend & in fact, I suspect it may well actually turn out to be more as I am quite an economical cook, especially when I keep the grocery budget in mind. Some of the things I cook have quite a high ratio of veg/pulses to meat.
Other things......well, we got a bagful of tubs & bottles refilled at the eco-refill shop & I bought half a tub of 'green bleach' to try, which is sodium percarbonate, I think one of the key ingredients in those branded oxy-type cleaners. I tried it out while cleaning the bathroom earlier - 2 tbsp in about a pint of boiling water. It's done a pretty good job, though perhaps not to my hands & I have made a note to get some rubber gloves next time I'm in town. I will try it on some other jobs over the next couple of weeks & if it continues to impress, I will find a bigger container & buy some more. 
Deliberately chose not to stop out for a coffee shop visit, partly as we had all that meat to get into the fridge, so we saved a little bit of Personal Spends there, though Mr F has been promised a breakfast tomorrow morning at our village farm shop cafe, so swings & roundabouts on the Spends.
Mr F is currently watering & feeding all the veg & I have had a wander around the garden making a mental note of tasks which I could usefully do tomorrow. I've done the princely total of one survey today, but I guess every little helps. I am now intending to try & find the last 2 words on today's Guardian word wheel, as I take it personally if I don't make the 'excellent' score each week. I've got the 9-letter word but need another 2 of any length to hit the maximum score. Can't for the life of me see them.......which means they will probably be obvious! Then we will have a joint go at the crossword, which always turns into a laugh as we are very new to cryptic clues, overthink them beyond all measure then can't believe sometimes how simple the answer actually is! Also hoping to make big progress on knitting the final sock of my batch for the presents bag later while watching TV. I might try to remember to post a photo of them all when I've finished. They are certainly colourful!
Right, that is it for today. Enjoy your evenings. Mine is defo going to involve a gin. Over & out, m'dears,
F x

Sun_Addict

That’s a great deal from the butcher. I have always worn rubber gloves to clean and wash pots. I even take a pair on holiday with me just in case 😆

badmemory

Do you try their wordiply.  I love it & check it out in the morning & then spend the day thinking about it.  You would be amazed at how many words youo can add the likes of nessless to.

ziggy2407

foxgloves said:

Hello Saturday Savers,
Decent day here so far. Cooler, cloudy & not as muggy at the moment so am enjoying chatting to you from the coffee bench. Today's budget-helping activity has mainly been taking up those meat deals at our local butcher. We had £35 of that underspend left following the pantry stock-up so this subsidised our total spend of £55, of which the other £20 will come from Week 1's grocery budget. We did manage to buy one of the bargainaceous whole pork loins which was priced at £60 but was £25 in the offer. Mr F cut it into 3 good-sized joints, including one for making a spicy pulled pork in the slow cooker at some point & a bigger one for doing a roast dinner next weekend when we have guests. We had planned to serve roast chicken, but felt it would be a sensible swap to use some of this nice pork instead of buying an additional item. He also cut a box of pork steaks from it & froze them too.
We also made use of 2 of the butcher's other offers - 10 for £20 on a combination of pick & mix packs, some of which will be used at BH weekend when we have friends coming over for a BBQ, & a 3 for £10 offer which stocked us up with plenty of mince & a pack of Cumberland sausages. After everything was divvied up & frozen, Mr F did a count-up & reckons we have got at least 51 main meal portions out of that £55 spend & in fact, I suspect it may well actually turn out to be more as I am quite an economical cook, especially when I keep the grocery budget in mind. Some of the things I cook have quite a high ratio of veg/pulses to meat.
Other things......well, we got a bagful of tubs & bottles refilled at the eco-refill shop & I bought half a tub of 'green bleach' to try, which is sodium percarbonate, I think one of the key ingredients in those branded oxy-type cleaners. I tried it out while cleaning the bathroom earlier - 2 tbsp in about a pint of boiling water. It's done a pretty good job, though perhaps not to my hands & I have made a note to get some rubber gloves next time I'm in town. I will try it on some other jobs over the next couple of weeks & if it continues to impress, I will find a bigger container & buy some more. 
Deliberately chose not to stop out for a coffee shop visit, partly as we had all that meat to get into the fridge, so we saved a little bit of Personal Spends there, though Mr F has been promised a breakfast tomorrow morning at our village farm shop cafe, so swings & roundabouts on the Spends.
Mr F is currently watering & feeding all the veg & I have had a wander around the garden making a mental note of tasks which I could usefully do tomorrow. I've done the princely total of one survey today, but I guess every little helps. I am now intending to try & find the last 2 words on today's Guardian word wheel, as I take it personally if I don't make the 'excellent' score each week. I've got the 9-letter word but need another 2 of any length to hit the maximum score. Can't for the life of me see them.......which means they will probably be obvious! Then we will have a joint go at the crossword, which always turns into a laugh as we are very new to cryptic clues, overthink them beyond all measure then can't believe sometimes how simple the answer actually is! Also hoping to make big progress on knitting the final sock of my batch for the presents bag later while watching TV. I might try to remember to post a photo of them all when I've finished. They are certainly colourful!
Right, that is it for today. Enjoy your evenings. Mine is defo going to involve a gin. Over & out, m'dears,
F x

Sounds like a very productive day with lots of great bargains.

I love Green Bleach and am slowly trying to use instead of normal bleach - thinking of the fishies and our waterways.  Our "Nancy B" swears by green bleach and Im often dipping in and out of her books - if you dont have her books check our her Instagram page.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

foxgloves

Hi Ziggy, I don't own Nancy B's books but I did read the cleaning one a while back when I borrowed it from the library. I think I will get on well with 'green bleach' as long as I buy myself some rubber gloves, then I shall test its efficacy on various different things. Like most people (except Nancy!), I'm not a great lover of cleaning, but I'm thinking of having a big declutter & deep clean in September to get the house looking nice for Autumn (my favourite month). The weather's usually still good enough for line-drying any big household stuff that hasn't been done over the summer too, so I think I'll pick a week (or morw likely a fortnight) & go for it.
Anyway, enjoy your Sunday,
F x